906 FIFTH REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL COMMISSION. 



this insect as early as the 1st of May. I have never observed it making attacks ear 

 lier than the Ist of September, continuing until the latter part of October. 



The attacks of this insect are made on healthy trees, and I have seen no less than 

 fifteen cedars entirely killed in the public square of Clay Center, Kans., that would 

 average six inches in diameter at the base. This Scolytid is not a native, but has 

 been introduced in cedar posts brought to the lumber-yards from Michigan and Ar- 

 kansas. I have examined posts from Arkansas which contained the perfect beetle, 

 (but dead), larvse, and puppe. When these pupae had completed their transforma- 

 tions, cedars in close proximity to the lumber-yard were at once liable to attack. 



The primary gallery of this insect as examined in Arkansas cedars is short and 

 straight, being from 18 to 25""» in length, and 3""" in width. The gallery widens at 

 one end into a trilobed chamber twice as wide as the main gallery. The number of 

 lateral or secondary galleries on each side varies from 15 to 60. These secondary 

 galleries are from one-half to 1™"' in width, and those arising near the ends of the 

 main gallery are about 45"^" in length, those arising near the middle are about one- 

 half as long. 



The burrows are about one half in the wood and one half in the bark. The second- 

 ary galleries rarely cross each other, and when they do, it is owing to some inequality 

 in the surface of the wood, or the close proximity of the burrows. 



This bark-borer is not without its enemies. I found fully one-half the pupae cases 

 examined contained nothing but the remains of a parasite that had destroyed the 

 pupa, and had itself failed to escape. The perfect fly was also seen passing over the 

 surface of the bark, seeking a favorable point to make an attack on his victim. Speci- 

 mens of this fly were sent to Mr. L. O. Howard, Assistant U. S. Entomologist, who 

 pronounced it a Chalcid fly belonging to the genus Spalhius. 



Leconte states that it inhabits the Middle and Eastern States and 

 Canada, and gives the following description of it : 



The beetle. — In the genus Phloeosinus the funicle or stalk of the antennae is much 

 shorter than the club ; the first joint is rounded ; the remaining four joints are closely 

 united and gradually become broader; the club is large, oval, compressed, obtusely 

 rounded, and divided by straight well-marked sutures. P. dentatus is rather smaller 

 than the other species of the genus, except P. punctatus, with the declivity of the 

 elytra more abrupt and flattened, and less convex; the striae are impressed and 

 scarcely punctured, the interspaces are wide, densely and strongly granulate and ru- 

 gose; the rugosities becoming acute tubercles on the declivity of the alternate inter- 

 spaces; second interspace not depressed on the declivity and furnished with a row 

 of smaller tubercles in some specimens, but not in others. This difference is probably 

 sexual. The head is granulate-punctate, and the front is not carinate. 



2. The Prussian blue pine-borer. 



Callidium antennatum Newman. 



In company with the juniper bark-borer, mining dying and dead juniper trees ; its 

 mine a long, shallow, irregular sinuous gallery about 6'"'° wide in the broadest part ; 

 the beetles occurring under the bark early in May in southern New England. 



This common borer has already been noticed as infesting the pine 

 (p. 700). It is nearly as common, perhaps, in the juniper ; at least I 

 have found it so in the vicinity of Providence, E. I., where it mines dead 

 or dying juniper trees in company with Phloeosinus dentatus. In one 

 small tree, three inches in diameter, nearly a dozen mines occurred, and 

 as many of the beetles were taken from under the bark on the 2d and 



